Last August World Triathlon announced that the long-distance triathlon world championships will be held as a PTO race series with races all around the world, including continental championships on each continent. For aquabike athletes it remained questionable if this is good or bad news since there was no mentioning of other multisport disciplines. Will we have continental aquabike championships on every continent? Maybe even more aquabike races at other events of the series? Or will there be no aquabike races included whatsoever?

 

Athletes keep asking me if I have any information about the European Aquabike Championships next year. Eventually they want to start with their season planning for the upcoming racing season. Since there was still no announcement from the European Triathlon Union I got the impression that they are either still negotiating with the PTO if other multisport disciplines will be included in their events, or they are struggling to find an event organizer for the 2024 Europeans.

At the end of October, the ETU sent out a press release with the promising title Unveiling the 2024 Europe Triathlon season calendar. The announcement included the 2024 calendar for European Triathlon Cup races as well as some European Championships. However, no date for the middle-distance triathlon and aquabike championships. “We are in negotiation with potential candidates and we hope we can inform you without further delay. These announcements should happen within the coming month and not later.” And they also noted that “Following your feedback, which we greatly appreciate, regarding calendar announcements, we have already started the process of organising the 2025 calendar. We have some surprises in store for you which we will let you know about very soon, stay tuned!”. So there´s hope for some changes – let´s hope that they will be improvements.

Last Tuesday the PTO announced that the 2024 European Triathlon Championships for pro athletes as well as for age groupers will be held in Ibiza in September. Still no mention of aquabike or other multisport disciplines which had their European Championships held within a multisport event over the last few years. So it still seemed unclear if we will even have European Aquabike Championships next year. Until the ETU sent out a reply to the PTO announcement a few hours later, stating that “In regards to the Continental Championships, the negotiations are still to be finalized and we hope to reach an agreement in the coming weeks, therefore no European Championship title should be awarded by PTO at this stage. We are in communication with the PTO to clarify this.”

OK, to me this sounds like nobody from the ETU has spoken to the PTO about that matter yet. And we now have November. But at least the statement gives some hope that we will know more about the 2024 European Championships soon, as ETU President Renato Bertrandi was quoted “We are happy to have new collaborations with professional Partners like PTO  but at present, for the 2024 season, our European Championship for Elite and AG on middle distance will be staged in the Multisport Festival that will take place in June 2024. The location and date of the middle distance European Championships (as well as the other European Championships) will be announced next week”. OK, so we now have a month at least.

I have to say I have some serious doubts if the ETU can keep the promise to announce the event details next week. But let´s keep our fingers crossed, so we might know more about next year´s European Aquabike Championships very soon.